A recent trend in the food/beverage industry has been the emergence of coffee shops which serve cappuccino and other coffee beverages having a foamed upper surface. Moreover, these shops often serve hot drinking chocolate and tea which may also have a foamed upper surface. Authentic cappuccino, as well as other hot beverages from a machine, are made by combining foamed milk and a beverage. When the beverage is stirred the white foam at the surface of the beverage tends to take on a two-toned appearance wherein portions are white or lightly colored while other portions are brown or darker in color.
With increasing popularity of these types of drinks, numerous instant cappuccino beverages and the like have appeared in the marketplace. Generally, these instant beverages fail to have the appearance of an authentic beverage because the foamed surface tends to primarily be brown color.
A recent patent which attempts to overcome the drawback of brown colored foams on instant coffee beverages is U.S. Pat. No. 5,882,716, which discloses a soluble beverage powder made of a soluble whitener powder containing a gas and a soluble coffee powder of delayed water solubility. Upon addition of water, the soluble whitener powder dissolves first. The coffee then dissolves such that the upper surface foam remains primarily white, or a very light color. However, a drawback of this beverage powder is that the consumer must wait up to 10 seconds, and possibly even longer, before the beverage is ready to drink. Moreover, the upper surface foam is still primarily white and, therefore, does not have the two-toned appearance of a conventional cappuccino beverage.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an instant dry mix beverage composition that produces a two-toned foam on its surface upon reconstitution in a hot liquid. The composition may be utilized with drinking chocolate, tea, coffee or any other beverage wherein a two-toned surface foam is desirable. The beverage has a two-toned surface foam when subjected to 3-5 quick stirs, which is equivalent to about 2-3 seconds, thereby eliminating the need for delayed dissolution or dispersion of the beverage.